History Education, Curriculum Theory, Media Literacy

Tag Archives: Editorial

Encountering history within and beyond borders

This is the editorial for the inaugural issue of Historical Encounters, a peer-reviewed, open access, interdisciplinary journal of historical consciousness, historical cultures. The title of the journal intends to suggest Gadamer’s (1992) notion of ‘the fusion of horizons’, as we explore the ways in which members of our communities experience, interpret, learn, study, and respond to the historical worlds they encounter. The editorial provides a brief, personal history, of the emergence of the journal. The papers in the inaugural issue reflect the wide range of scholarship currently occurring that treats historical consciousness, historical culture, and history education as its objects of analysis. With contributions from Australia, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, they represent an exciting diversity of works located within a variety of intersecting research fields including: history teacher education (McLean & colleagues), historical theory (Thorp), museum studies and public pedagogy (Smith), curriculum history and history textbook studies (Elmersjö), public history (Clark), and history education (Ahonen; and Ammert). The inaugural issue also offers it’s first ‘provocations’ piece, arguing for the use of ‘counterfactuals’ in history education (Huijen & Holthuis); and shares an extended abstract of a recently completed doctoral dissertation (Salter), in a section that it is hoped will be successful in showcasing the work of new scholars in the field.